Many individuals listen to broadcast music (e.g., FM radio, AM radio, HD Radio, and satellite radio) and watch broadcast television on a daily basis. Often, the broadcasters of the music and television programs include information related to the media being broadcast. Examples include song title, artist information, and television programming information. In addition, information about the broadcaster itself (e.g., the station call letters or channel information in the case of a satellite broadcaster) is typically included. One specific example of a service for providing information about a radio broadcast is the Radio Data System (RDS), which is also referred to as the Radio Broadcast Data System (RBDS). RDS is a communications protocol standard for embedding small amounts of digital information in conventional FM radio broadcasts. The RDS system standardizes several types of information transmitted, including time, station identification and program information.
In some instances, the listener may wish to capture information related to the broadcast in order to later purchase or rent a copy of the song or other media from a media content provider (e.g., iTunes, Zune, Rhapsody, and Napster). One method is to write down the information. In some instances, that is isn't possible. Thus some media broadcasters maintain playlists that are accessible via the Internet or other means. This requires the listener to remember what station they were listening to and when they were listening.
Another method of capturing information related to broadcast media is described in US Patent Application Publication No. 2008/0188029. This application describes a personal media device (PMD), such as an iPod or iPhone, and an accessory that cooperate to capture broadcast media information. In some instances, the above application describes an accessory unit that interfaces to or is integral with the PMD. The accessory captures data related to the broadcast media and transfers the captured information to the PMD. In turn, the PMD transmits the captured information to a media content provider to facilitate the purchase of media (e.g., a song) that corresponds to the captured information (e.g. RDS data for the song).
The above-described form of automated capture does suffer from some drawbacks. For example, in order to transfer the data related to the broadcast media to the network it appears that the accessory need to first be connected to the PMD. It is the PMD that then transfers the tags to the content servers. This places a great deal of processing requirements on the PMD and requires that the PMD be available and able to store a large amount of data. Further, this can limit the end user's ability to easily switch among PMD manufactures and content providers.
Thus, a need exists for an PMD manufacture and content provider agnostic media information and interaction system.